We’ve heard from many of you on the recent changes to our basic plan and want to let you know that we have been listening, and we have some news about upcoming developments to make the free plan even more valuable.

The changes include:

Extending video clips to 30 seconds (available now).

Reintroducing Night mode scheduling (coming early December 2017).

Simplified pricing for Canary Membership, which will become effective in the upcoming months. 5 devices per location, for just $9.99/month or $99/year. Additional devices (above 5) will be $4.99 per device or $49/year (or the same amounts in your respective currency).

Please refer to this blog post for a message from our CEO, Adam Sager with more details.

Changing the plans that were originally sold with your device is a major deal breaker. I chose the Canary device because I didn’t have to have a monthly plan for what I needed. I was perfectly content with the 3 days of footage that we had. I can see where many people may find the monthly membership to be a plus, but I didn’t. If I have to pay a monthly fee, I’ll just purchase my own NAS device to record the video on myself and NEVER NEVER use or recommend Canary again. Good job getting people to buy one thing, then just giving us a $200 streaming device.

This represents a good move on Canary’s part, but it’s long overdue. For me, it’s way too late. I returned my Canary All-in-One unit to Bed Bath & Beyond a couple of days after the last changes took effect, and have since replaced it with a security camera from another manufacturer. Even though the AiO has superior features to most of its competitors (better picture quality and sensors for temperature, humidity, and “air quality” - whatever that includes), I don’t think I’ll return to the fold, for the following reasons:

The email I received regarding the last change to the Free Plan made it sound as if the Canary user community had requested the changes. Clearly, as we now know based on feedback on this forum and product feedback left at Amazon.com and other sites, this was not the case.

I initially complained about the short notice we were given about the upcoming Free Plan changes, arguing that five days notice was inadequate, particularly when the email that I received didn’t include information about all the changes being made. (The Night Mode feature wasn’t mentioned in the email - I didn’t realize it was being taken away until I checked the Canary web site…)

Canary Support’s initial response was offensive. The email response I received said that Canary had the right to make changes to its service as it sees fit, because its Terms and Conditions allow it to do so. And so it does. And they made the changes, with only five days notice. Unless Canary changes its Terms and Conditions to either limit the changes they can make to the Free Plan features, require 30 days advance notice, and/or require compensation for withdrawn Free Plan features, I won’t even consider trusting Canary again. They did this once. What makes you think the company won’t do it again?

When I tried expressing my concerns on the Canary community forums, my post was withheld and my account was suspended without explanation. Mysteriously, the post was restored for a brief few minutes a week later, and then taken down again. I realize that there are guidelines for posting on this forum, but my post violated none of the guidelines. Others expressing concern regarding Canary’s change to its Free Plan have had their posts (which also didn’t violate the guidelines) removed as well.

Thank you for your honest feedback. We realize that the timing and content of our initial email missed the mark for many of our customers and we are truly sorry about that.

I can certainly appreciate how the response from our support team upset you. Our team is small and they were doing their best to try and respond to all support requests as quickly as possible.

We are sorry that we lost your trust but we are still very committed to our customers and are going to keep showing that commitment by continuing to build new features and delivering additional value to ALL of our users. We can guarantee that the basic plan will only get better over time, as we continue to add more integrations and improvements to the product.

As for your post being moderated, I don’t know what the content of your original post was prior to being removed but our moderators did their best to only remove posts which were overtly profane, attempting to incite other community members, or were actively promoting competitor products. There were many of these posts and it’s quite possible those which did not meet the criteria for removal were caught up in the mix. If this was the case with your post I do apologize. We believe that this community should be a forum for our users to voice their opinions both positive and negative and the many posts which still remain that voice concern for our recent changes are a testament to that.

We would love the opportunity to regain your trust and have you back as a customer. Feel free to DM me if you’d like to reconsider.

Here’s the post that was withheld, restored, and then removed from the General forum:

New Topic: Canary’s “New Free Plan Experience”

I received an email yesterday (Sept. 28, 2017) announcing Canary’s “New Free Plan Experience.” The email said that under the "New Free Plan Experience, video events will no longer be recorded when a Canary unit is disarmed (Home mode). The email also said that Canary units will continue to record while armed (Away mode). For personal and family security, I rely on my Canary unit to record video while the system is armed in Night mode, which was not addressed in the email.

It wasn’t until I went to the Canary Help Center today (Sept. 29) that I discovered that under the “New Free Plan Experience,” Night mode will no longer be available for Canary devices. The Help Center goes on to state that Night mode will only be available with Canary Membership.

Canary’s Night mode (recording of video while my family is home and asleep - a time when we are most vulnerable) was one of the key features I was looking for in a security camera. The fact that Canary offered this feature under its free plan was one of my key reasons for purchasing a Canary camera, rather than a camera from one of its competitors. The fact that Canary is now disabling this critical (in my opinion), security-related feature unless I pay for a full membership is at best fraudulent and at worst grossly negligent.

I don’t know who at Canary withheld the original post and suspended my original account, but the post was briefly restored early the next week by @Zev, and then taken back down after a few minutes…

Thanks @Scott. Based on that post I suspect it was just caught up in the mix with others that were taken down. Things were moving fast so it’s not surprising some mistakes were made. But I’m confident that we were not purposely trying to suppress any and all negative comments - we expected it.

How to regain confidence in Canary? Before this announcement there was the subject of Apple HomeKit support more than a year ago! Especially since Apple has lightened the integration process no longer requires a specific chip.

How do you want to be motivated to take a paid subscription to a company that does not live up to its commitments? This is not reassuring for the customer.

I currently own 2 canary devices. I understand that pricing needs to change over time and I would have been ready to pay a fair price for the 24h window that is all I need. But as many customers I am very upset for the way the new pricing was enforced. It should not have been done over night without any warning. Now my home is unprotected unless I pay $160/year for the only remaining premium service that I do not need.

And as a user said before it is a major deal breaker not to honor existing customers. Who knows if the most recent enhancements of the basic plan are not going away again? And what will be next time? Maybe month the cost goes up to $199 or $250.

I was actually going to add more cameras by the end of the year but now I will have to switch to another vendor. It is really a pity but especially for home security I need to have confidence in the provider.

The very unfortunate decision to change the program from what I originally signed up for has made my made my upcoming x-mas shopping more challenging. I was planning on purchasing a unit for each of my older siblings. That will NOT be happening now. You have lost trust. I believe that Canary’s choice of not grandfathering in early adopters is incredibly short sighted.

I signed up for the new plan with the code that enabled three months of service free. And once the five cameras for $99/yr becomes effective I may stick around. However the first thing I noticed is that only get 30 days free rather than three months is that just a glitch?

I’m assuming the glitch you are referring to is the invoice email you received from us after redeeming the coupon code, is that correct? Basically, the 3-month coupon which has been applied to your account will zero out your balance for 3 months. You won’t be charged anything until your fourth month. You will, however, continue to receive an invoice email on your renewal date and it will continue to say “you will renew at $X” even though you have a coupon applied.